Other forms: damping, damped, damps
Damp means a little wet, and not in a good way. A towel that never quite dried, grass first thing in the morning, a shirt off the line that is not ready to fold. It is wetness you feel against your skin rather than wetness you can see.
As a noun, damp is the wet that gets into a building: rising damp climbing a wall, a damp patch under the window, the smell of a damp cellar shut up all winter. The verb is dampen — dampen a cloth, or dampen someone's enthusiasm — while damp down is what you do to a fire or to excitement. A damp squib is an event that promised a great deal and fizzled. And damp is far less than wet: a damp cloth cleans a screen, a wet one drips down it.
1adjectivedampSlightly wet, in a way that feels unpleasant.
“The sheets were still damp when he made the bed.”
2nounwetnessWetness in the air or in the walls of a building.
“There is damp in the back bedroom every winter.”
3verbreduceTo make something slightly wet, or to reduce a fire or a feeling.
“Damp the cloth before you wipe the screen.”
Damp did not start with water at all. Middle English dampen meant to stifle or suffocate, and Old English damp goes back to Proto-Germanic *dampaz, the source of German Dampf, vapour or steam, and Swedish damm, dust. The word began in smoke and choking air, and only later cooled into slight wetness.
Proto-Germanic
*dampaz
Old English
damp
Middle English
dampen — to stifle; suffocate
English, today
damp
From Middle English dampen (“to stifle; suffocate”), from Old English damp, from Proto-Germanic dampaz. Akin to Low German damp, Dutch damp, and German Dampf (“vapor, steam, fog”), Icelandic dampi, Swedish damm (“dust”), and to German dampf imperative of dimpfen (“to smoke”). Also Middle English dampen (“to extinguish, choke, suffocate”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA